Disclaimer: See Chapter 9.
Special thanks to my beta, Lavanya Six!
Timeline Reminder: The 'Enlightenment' chapters take place approximately one year after Ozai's death.
The Adventures of Avatar Azula
An Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic
Chapter 10
Enlightenment, Part 2
Pathik insisted on changing locations before they began working on the second Chakra. Now, they were sitting on a giant stone pillar next to a waterfall.
Azula still half-suspected he was screwing with her.
"The second Chakra is the Water Chakra, located at the sacrum."
"Where?"
"The pelvis."
"…Ah."
"In any event, this Chakra deals with pleasure and is blocked by guilt."
So the pleasure chakra is located near the genitals. How creative. "I have one question, before we begin with this."
"Why is pleasure blocked by guilt?" Pathik offered.
"Do you have to keep reminding me you can read my mind?"
Pathik laughed. That laugh was starting to really annoy Azula. As was every other part of Pathik. "Actually, I could guess that by myself."
"Why?"
"Because you were dubious about the relationship between survival and fear in the Earth Chakra."
Azula tried her best, but she was unable to come up with a good response to that. "Okay, true. So could you explain it?"
"Hmm. First, how about you—"
"Don't tell me you're going to force me to have visions again."
"Actually, I was going to have you just tell me what you feel guilty of."
"…Oh."
"But if you want to have more visions—"
"No no," Azula spoke quickly, "your idea is perfectly fine, Guru."
That earned her another laugh from Pathik. Bastard.
Shaking it off, Azula took a deep breath and started searching through her memory.
"Well?" Pathik asked after a few minutes.
"I'm going to be honest with you, Guru. Guilt is a somewhat foreign emotion for me."
"How's that?"
Azula bit the inside of her cheek. "If you've read my mind, you should know. I wasn't exactly the nicest person in the past. I'm still not really a very nice person."
"Hmmmm…"
Agni, that noise… "What is it?"
"You seem very invested in this view of yourself as a terrible person."
"'Invested'?" Talk about weird word choice…
"Perhaps we'll talk about that more later. If you have trouble with the concept of guilt, why don't we start with what you blame yourself for?"
"…I guess that's easier to work with," Azula admitted.
She shifted, trying to get into a more comfortable sitting position. This would probably take a while.
"I guess I'll start with my brother…"
Pathik didn't say a word while Azula detailed her part in her ruined relationships with Zuko, Mai, and Katara.
"But I guess you already knew all that, from when you read my mind," Azula grumbled after she finished.
"First of all, I'm not reading your mind. I'm seeing your spirit. It doesn't let me look at your memories in nearly as much detail as you just gave me."
"I'm relieved."
"And even if it did, I think it was beneficial to you for you to say that much aloud."
Sure doesn't feel that way. "I suppose. So, now what?"
"Well, let's examine these events closer. Why did you do the things you did?"
"I just told you why."
"You only talked about the circumstances," Pathik said, sounding annoyed. "What I was asking was—"
"Yes, I know what you were asking. You want to know what underlying reason there was behind all three. Right?"
"Indeed."
Azula smiled grimly. "Don't sound so confused, Guru. I was just trying to buy some time." She leaned her head back. "What's there to tell? I treated them like crap because I held them in contempt. It's not complex."
"So why did you—"
"—hold them in contempt?"
Pathik chuckled briefly. "It seems you can see my spirit as well."
"Ha ha." Azula continued leaning back for a while, listening to the roar of the waterfall as it plunged into the murky depths below.
She waited for Pathik to say something, but he never did. Stubborn bastard. Oh well.
"Why don't I tell you a story?" Azula finally said.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl. Innocent and pure, she played with her parents, grandfather, and older brother every day. They had so much fun together, just the five of them alone in their tiny house.
Then one day, the little girl did a bad thing. She wandered outside.
On the outside, she saw an old man, sitting all by himself with a tin tray in front of him, a few coins scattered inside. The little girl's grandfather, just as old as this man, was taken care of and loved, but this man was spat upon and kicked by passers-by.
The little girl wandered on and saw a sick man, with boils all over his body. Her older brother had looked like that, once, but her parents had applied a little balm and he had gotten all better. Nobody was giving this man any balm, though. Instead, another man was slicing the boils off with a knife, causing the sick man to scream out in pain each time.
The little girl wandered on and saw a sleeping man, face down on the street, rats gnawing at his flesh. She scared the rats away and tried to get the man to wake up, but he wouldn't stir. She groaned and grunted and eventually managed to turn him over, only to see that his face had rotted and melted off, leaving only bones locked into a grimace.
The little girl wandered on, passing by other broken, tired, dirty, hungry men, until eventually, she saw someone different. This was a clean, handsome, well-dressed man, wandering the city with a smile on his face. When he passed the other men, they all bowed down and lay their faces on the ground, and despite having almost nothing, they all gave one object or another to the clean man. He accepted all the gifts with that same smile, putting them into a sack he carried.
Confused, the little girl approached the clean man and asked him a question. "Who are you?"
The clean man looked down at her, still smiling. "I am a wandering monk. Who are you, my dear?"
"I'm a girl. What's a 'monk'?"
"A monk is a person who can commune with the spirits."
"Is that why everyone gives you stuff?"
The clean man chuckled. "Indeed. They believe that if they gain my favor, I'll intercede with the spirits on their behalf. Then the spirits might lift them out of their misery."
"Will you, then?"
The clean man chuckled again. "Even the spirits can't change fate, my dear. All of our destinies are set from the moment we are born. Most of us are destined to live hard and empty lives. On the other hand, some of us," he jiggled the sack with the gifts he was given, "are destined to receive whatever excess the empty ones happen to obtain. This allows us to live pleasant and full lives."
The little girl didn't know quite what to say. The clean man chuckled a third time at her confusion. "Don't worry, my dear. Nobody can change fate. We can only fulfill the roles we were given."
Her parents found the little girl then and took her back home, but the clean man's words continued to ring in her ears.
No matter what, she wasn't going to be an empty one.
There was silence for a time. Then Pathik spoke.
"As parables go, that was rather uninspired."
"Oh?"
"An old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a wandering monk?"
Azula shrugged. "I may have read something similar to that while studying some obscure, dead religion."
Pathik cleared his throat. Loudly.
"Would you like to say something?" she asked in her most polite tone.
The Fire Nation is the one who made that religion dead, she was sure he wanted to say. But he didn't. "So," he said, clearly anxious to change the subject, "I believe what you were trying to say with that story was obvious enough."
"Do tell."
"You believed that your brother and friends were…"
"Empty ones, yes. I believed that they lived empty, meaningless lives, fit only to give whatever they could to people who were actually worth something."
"'People' meaning yourself."
"Naturally."
Pathik let out a long sigh. "I understand. But you are different now, correct?"
Azula was silent.
"Correct?"
She remained silent.
"You brought this up when I asked you what you blame yourself for. That means you must have changed."
"Yeah. I did. I mean, I obviously did. Just…not by a lot."
Pathik didn't say anything. Since he could read her mind, or spirit, or whatever, he must have known she'd go on without him saying a word. The bastard.
"I do blame myself for what I did to them. But I don't think it's because I hurt them. I think I blame myself for not having them as my allies anymore, for losing…tools."
Azula lay back, putting her head on the cold stone below her. Pathik let out a long sound, kind of like a 'hmm' but different.
They were silent for a long time. Pathik was the one who spoke first.
"Now I have a story for you, Avatar."
There was once a little girl. She went too far into the ocean and drowned.
Pathik evidently found his joke very hilarious, and demonstrated his opinion through voracious laughter.
Azula had a somewhat different opinion. "Yes, yes, very clever."
"My apologies, Avatar," Pathik said through his laughter, "I couldn't resist."
"I'm sure."
"But there is a tale I do wish to tell."
Azula lay down, putting her head on her arms. "Be my guest." Not like I have anything better to do.
There was once a woman with five sons. She loved them all very much.
The eldest son fell in with a bad crowd, and started fighting all the time. One time the fight escalated and he ended up with a knife in his throat.
In order to make sure her second son avoided this fate, the mother didn't allow him to have any friends. But the loneliness made him miserable and he ended up committing suicide.
In order to make sure her third son was never sad, the mother gave him everything he wanted. This made him naïve and weak, easy prey for those who would feed on others. One night he was beaten, robbed, and killed.
In order to make sure her fourth son was self-sufficient, she trained him in all the combat arts she knew. But his strength made him cocky, and wont to challenge others to fights. Same as the eldest, one fight escalated and his upper leg got sliced deep by a sword. He bled to death soon afterward.
Out of grief for her sons' fates, the mother locked herself in her room, alone with her misery. Her youngest son died of neglect.
"Oh, you're just a bundle of joy today, aren't you?"
"I would appreciate you showing an emotion other than sarcasm, Avatar."
Azula grumbled.
"I assume you see my point?"
"No, I think you may have been too subtle. Why don't you try hammering it home a little stronger, for the benefit of the audience?"
"No matter how much you attempt to push me away with your biting wit, Avatar, this journey is about yourself. And you are the only person you cannot run away from."
Azula sighed. It was like the guy could only speak in pretentious-sounding garbage.
"You do see my point."
"I spend too much time blaming myself. Right?"
"Precisely. What the mother failed to understand is that misfortune and misery happen. They cannot be avoided. She needed to accept that reality and move past it. She needed to forgive herself. Then, she might have saved her other sons."
Azula bit the inside of her cheek. "So I need to forgive myself. Is that it?"
"Yes. You wanted to know why the pleasure Chakra is blocked by guilt, correct?"
"Mm."
"Pain does not block pleasure. Misery does not block pleasure. Even if one possesses both, happiness is still possible. However, if we allow our spirits to be clouded with guilt, we start to dislike ourselves, to hate ourselves. If a person hates himself, then he feels unworthy of pleasure; he feels pain is his just reward. The more happiness he feels, the more guilt he feels. It is a cycle one cannot escape. Only guilt makes us turn our pleasure into pain."
"And you think I do that?"
"I know you do that."
Azula bit her cheek even harder. She tasted blood. "But if you don't feel guilty when you do something wrong, what'll stop you from doing that thing again in the future?"
"Don't tell me you're defending guilt now, Avatar," Pathik said, evident amusement in his voice. "I believe you told me guilt is a foreign emotion for you?"
Seriously. Bastard. "I know of it in an academic sense, and can see its benefits, even if I don't experience it myself."
"Oho. I'm impressed you managed to come up with that defense on the spot."
Okay, now he's trying to piss me off. "Thanks for the compliment. Now will you address my argument?"
"If you wish." Pathik made a show of thinking about it, 'hmm'ing and all that, but Azula suspected he already had his response all lined up. "It is all well and good to learn from your mistakes. But if you allow yourself to feel guilt over them, you limit your potential to love not only yourself, but others as well."
"…How does that follow?"
"It's actually quite simple. If you can't even love yourself, how can you possibly love anyone else?"
Azula opened her mouth, then closed it. Then did so again. Finally, she said, "That's really stupid."
"Thank you."
"But, look. If you never feel guilty, no matter what you do, doesn't that mean you don't care about anybody else? I mean, if you're just blasé about hurting people, or…"
"If you actively enjoy it?"
"Yes, exactly."
"You are correct, Avatar. If you don't feel guilt, you don't love others. But if you feel guilt, you don't love yourself, and so don't love others." She could almost feel his smile. "Quite a paradox, isn't it?"
There were a number of things she wanted to tell him, but Azula managed to keep them all under her tongue. Though since Pathik could read her mind, it was probably pointless anyway. "So what's the solution?"
"Paradoxes don't have solutions, Avatar. That's precisely why they're paradoxes. The ordinary person must simply muddle through as best he can. But you are not an ordinary person, and you cannot afford to do what an ordinary person does. If you wish to open your Chakra, Avatar, you must eliminate your guilt. There is no other way."
"But I told you, I don't—"
"—feel guilt, I know. Which brings us full circle. Our main goal here is to find out why you're so obsessed with thinking of yourself as a monster."
Now that shut Azula up quick.
"I can see you won't tell me anytime soon." Pathik was starting to sound more forceful now, even a little impatient. The fear of him was starting to creep back into Azula's skull. "We cannot move on if we do not deal with this first. Therefore…"
Azula flinched back, but it was too late. He put his finger on her forehead and she sunk into the ocean of memories.
Azula put her head on her hands, watching the small squirrel-cat Zuko had found. It was a cute little thing, with its long fluffy tail, buck teeth, and triangular ears sticking straight up out of its head.
She pet it absent-mindedly, feeling the soft fur. It was very relaxing. She could understand why people kept them as pets.
It started with a spark. Azula created a small spark while petting the squirrel-cat. It was more curiosity than anything. She just wanted to see what would happen. The shock of the spark startled the squirrel-cat, and it looked about warily, trying to see what caused it that small jolt of pain.
A smile slowly started forming on Azula's lips. Caused it pain. She was the one who caused it pain.
Another spark, a bigger one this time. Now the squirrel-cat decided it didn't matter what caused the pain, it just wanted to get away. Not willing to let it run, Azula gripped the small animal strongly with her hand.
Now the squirrel-cat was clearly in distress. It started wildly looking about for some sort of escape, squeaking pathetically.
Azula's smile grew broader. Before she knew it, she started making strange movements with the hand gripping the squirrel-cat.
Slowly but surely, Azula felt her palm getting hotter. Slowly but surely, the squirrel-cat started moving more frantically, started crying more loudly, started scratching more ferociously. In order to keep it under control, Azula had to add her other hand to the mix, gripping the animal's neck and forcing it down.
The squirrel-cat's moments of highest activity were when the smoke started rising from its mouth. That only lasted for a little bit, though. Soon enough, it started moving more sluggishly, as the smoke got thicker and thicker.
Her mother was the one who found her, holding the charred remains of the squirrel-cat, grin still fastened to her face.
It was the first time she ever created fire.
The conclusion of that vision brought another long bout of silence.
"I see," Pathik eventually said.
Azula didn't respond.
"Thinking you're a horrible person isn't how you feel guilt. It's how you avoid feeling guilt. After all, for a horrible person, things like that are to be expected. But if you were just another human, like everybody else—"
"Yeah, yeah, congratulations, you figured it out. You're really brilliant, and all that."
"It's impossible to eliminate your guilt if you keep running away from it, Avatar. You must face it head-on."
"You know, you're not saying anything I didn't already know."
"But this is interesting," Pathik said, in a tone of mock surprise. "Not only are you afraid that you're a monster, but you also use that fear to avoid confronting your guilt. I understand some call this 'cognitive dissonance.'"
"I'm just a screwed-up ball of contradictions, aren't I?"
Pathik chuckled softly. "Aren't we all?"
Azula made a dismissive sound.
"I only speak the truth, Avatar."
"Yeah. Yeah, I know you do."
"Be that as it may. In time, you may be able to accept your guilt naturally. But, alas, we cannot afford to leave the world absent your presence for that long. Thus, I fear some drastic measures may be required."
"I'm listening."
"Forced empathy. I have the ability to make you directly feel the pain you have inflicted upon others."
Azula gaped.
"I will only do so with your permission. However, it is my opinion that there is no other way."
All the pain she had ever caused…Azula could scarcely even imagine it. She certainly didn't want to.
"Avatar?"
If she could access the Avatar State at will through this…if this was the only way to gain that kind of power… "Fine. Sure. Whatever. Do it."
"Are you certain—"
"I said do it. Before I change my mind."
Pathik grunted. And before she changed her mind, he once again put his finger to her forehead.
It hurts
Azula was her mother, suffering in agony for hours to bring her into the world, all that pain compressed into a single second-
It hurts
Azula was the squirrel-cat, insides burned to ashes in an inferno of flame, voice croaking out to-
It hurts
Azula was her brother, each and every time she had kicked him, each and every time she had burned him, each and every time she had said just the right combination of words to stab a blade into his heart more painful than any sword-
It hurts
Azula was her father, kneeling on the ground, feeling his life's work crumble around him, at the hands of his own flesh and blood, the person he had spent so much time and energy teaching everything he knew to-
It hurts
Azula was Katara, who had finally found a friend her own age, a friend who hadn't cared that she was the daughter of the Chief, a friend she had done so much for, helping her with no thought for herself, until she learned that she wasn't really a friend after all, learned while writhing on the ground with a searing pain in her chest like none she had never felt, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the-
It hurts
Azula was her friends, her only friends when she was Princess, who had to live each and every day in the terror that if they displeased her, if they didn't do exactly what she wanted, they might get beaten, they might get burned, they might die, their family might die, and there was nothing they could do-
It hurts
Azula was a Fire Nation soldier, just trying to make enough money to support her family, when she saw the tidal wave, and then she was swept away, and thought about her children, and what would they do without her, and I don't want to die-
It hurts!
And all the pain was flowing together, and she didn't know who she was anymore, the pain was so great it blocked out everything else, time, space, everything-
Avatar!
It was Pathik's voice.
Avatar! Keep a hold of yourself! Remember who you are!
She couldn't remember, she didn't want to remember, she didn't want to be the person who caused all this-
You must know who you are! If you lose yourself, it all becomes meaningless!
Meaning, identity, who cares about that kind of stuff, it doesn't matter to the pain-
You are responsible for this pain. It is your fault. As the Avatar, you must accept that.
Her fault…all of it…
If you want to blame yourself, do so. If you want to hate yourself, do so. You have that right. But you cannot lie to yourself.
I…don't want to…
It…hurts…
Slowly, Azula awoke out of the sea of pain. She was still lying on the stone pillar, the waterfall still bellowing its endless roar. Her back was sore, but she didn't sit up.
"How are you feeling, Avatar?" Pathik asked. He did honestly sound concerned.
"I don't know," she said stupidly.
"From what I can see, you have opened your second Chakra."
Azula scratched at an eye socket.
"If I may ask, what method did you find to accept your guilt and move past it?"
Azula sat up, groaning as her joints creaked against each other. "I understood that no matter how bad I felt, I can't change the past, only the future. I realized I didn't want to wallow in self-pity and self-hatred forever. Something." She grinned. "You know, maybe I was right the first time. Maybe I just naturally don't feel much guilt in the first place."
There was a short pause, then Pathik started laughing. After a second, Azula joined in.
"I must admit, Avatar, you are much different from anyone else I've ever known."
"Thanks for the compliment."
"Come. We must head to the site where we will open the third Chakra."
"Remind me again, why does it matter where we open each Chakra?"
Pathik adopted his lecturing tone. Azula could almost picture him wagging a finger at her. If she knew what he looked like. "As you should know already, location is very important in spiritual matters."
Not for the first time, and almost certainly not for the last, Azula sighed.
Bastard.
End of Chapter 10
Author's Notes: Deepest apologies for the time delay on this chapter. I had a bunch of real life matters to attend to. Me having a tough time figuring out how I should tackle this chapter certainly didn't help, of course. But in the end, I managed to finish it, and hopefully it isn't terrible. I'll try my upmost to not have the next one take as long.
The "walking outside and seeing an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a wandering monk" thing is taken from Buddhism—supposedly, Siddhartha Gautama did the same before he became the Buddha. Azula, naturally, put her own personal spin on it.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter.